Pages

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

In honor of Halloween and Wordless Wednesday, I share with you the scariest photo of all.

The scrapbook my grandmother made for my father from when he was in the isolation ward at Santa Clara County Hospital at age 4 with polio. It has cards and letters from family and friends. But it was left out in the woods under tarps for about 15 years. I saved what I could from inside. Yes, those are egg sacs and caterpillar burrows. And lots of water damage.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

In August 2011, I visited my grandpa
in Washington (State). I took my Flip-Pal scanner and photo organizer
boxes and we went through all his pictures that were literally in shoe boxes.
I organized them all in categories in the boxes after I scanned them and got
each photo’s story from Grampa.

We sat at his kitchen table and
while a photo scanned, he’d be telling me the story of the next photo. I
learned about his hometown, his snakebites, his nicknames, his college, his
restaurants and everything in between. I came home with over 500 photo
scans and no plan to write a book. Or plan at all, really.

I started writing website posts, but
it then it started being a website all about Grampa. And so I decided to
try a book. A little over a year later and I tried and did!
It’s here! It’s been distributed to Grampa and aunts and uncles, so I can
share now.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Where does the time go?!?It was two whole years ago and 298 posts ago
that I realized there was a side
club for genealogy in the blogosphere and I had never known it.I started Mascot Manor Genealogy and… well… here we are!

It’s been a wonderful experience and
a very supportive environment.Through
this blog, I have found several cousins and other relations, all of whom are
very special to me.

My cousin (and
friend) in Scotland found me through this blog and helped me to find that we
are indeed cousins and that we do indeed come from Ireland.She also helped me through the very difficult
time this year of losing my dad.

Other cousins and family previously unknown have shown me pictures, maps, treasures
and data.I can never tell you enough
the joy each of those emails brings.

Monday, October 22, 2012

I’ve
been taking some fun classes through the National Institute of Genealogical Studies. The class I just finished was, Electronic
Resources: Using The Internet. After each module of learning, there
are some assignments and the assignment in today’s module had to do with Google Maps
and Historical Directories. Because Google Maps is old hat for me, I try
to challenge myself and work a part of the family I have not concentrated on
before. So today I chose my Badgley family.

My
Badgley family history was “done” and given to me by a cousin. I don’t
have a terrific time with this. Some people jump for joy when they find a
cousin who has spent 50 years researching and has all this info to share.
While it’s great to know, you then usually need to go back through and validate
it all. I don’t like that part.

So for the most part I've ignored my Badgleys. But today with this
assignment from the Institute, I decided to start in Canada. It is said
that my Badgleys were Loyalists, fleeing from New Jersey to Ontario. My
second great grandfather, William Deyo Badgley, died in Thurlow (now Belleville), Hastings, Ontario,
Canada in 1873. What would make him interesting? I asked myself. I found him on the
1861 Canadian census and saw that he was a farmer. Maybe I’d like him
more if I saw his farm. I Google Mapped Belleville, but I wanted to know
and see his actual farm.

Having
never researched in Canada before (or, actually, in the United States FOR Canada), I
Googled “Thurlow Ontario City Directory.” It brought me to the QuintBranch, Ontario Genealogical Society website.
This website has amazing links, among them a link to a 1864-1865 Directory of the County of Hastings and Belleville, Ontario.
Page 353 of this directory
showed that he was, indeed, from the township of Thurlow (which is now part of
Belleville) and he was on the “VII Concession, Lot 24”. I had no idea
what this was, so I found an article
about the Canadian County Atlas and read about concessions and lots. I
then found a township map with marked names of residents.
Using the process of elimination, I found the seventh concession, lot 24 and then used the township map alongside Google Map to find my ancestor’s
actual farm. Sadly, there is no street view, but it is still beautiful to
see from a satellite!